Subjunctive remembrance - "a walking shadow": a meditation on war and love

McKay explains Tecumseh Sherman's scorched death policy, a military strategy in which was to destroy utterly the very foundation of the life of the "enemy" abetting. Sherman is an acknowledged originator of modern total war, in effect the "hell" to which he immediately refers with his scorched death policy across the American South (1864) and particularly in South Carolina. Sherman's total war does not distinguish between civilian and military, human and other, for it is war not between armies but between peoples (now, apparently, "civilizations")--potentially a total "cleansing" of them and all who are with them. She also notes that Sherman explanation of "hell", does not propose to lead one to "touch the face of God," it would seek, nonetheless, the one true answer in a world of unimaginable differences in motivation and experience.